THE history of the Victorian Age will never be written; we know too much
about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historianignorance, which
simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection
unattainable by the highest art. Concerning the Age which has just passed, our
fathers and our grandfathers have poured forth and accumulated so vast a
quantity of information that the industry of a Ranke would be submerged by it,